Free The Beautiful One by Emily Greenwood

hadn’t truly expected Anna Black to be a typical sort of governess, had he?
    â€œCome down at once.”
    â€œIf you will wait just a moment, my lord,” she said breezily, “I shall be down directly. Lizzie, the owlet.”
    Lizzie cleared her throat. “Here.”
    He tapped her on the shoulder before she could lift her arms farther. “Give me that creature, please.”
    She looked uncertain, but she clearly didn’t want to displease him, and she handed over the motionless owl. He took it carefully from her and did not return her tentative smile. He could feel her eagerness for him to acknowledge her, but he let it flow past him.
    The leaves and branches above them shook as Anna Black crouched down and extended her hand for the animal. Her bonnet, the same horrible blue one, had fallen on its strings around her neck again, and her hair, apparently loosened by her climb, curled crazily about her face as if she were some unkempt urchin, accentuating her pert nose and reminding him of her jack-in-the-box appearance from the coach.
    Her pink lips pressed outward at the sight of him; doubtless she was annoyed by his arrival, but her expression didn’t draw an answering wave of annoyance from him. Instead, her lips were making him wonder, unaccountably, what it might feel like to be kissed all over by pink butterflies.
    â€œThe owlet, please,” she fairly ordered him.
    â€œDon’t be ridiculous. Get down this instant before you fall. I will return the owlet.”
    â€œI am already positioned to do so. If you will just give it to me, I can put it back and then receive your displeasure properly on the ground.”
    He grunted. Why did he keep finding himself in out-of-his-control conversations with this maddening woman?
    In his palm the owlet’s heart beat with a rapid, stressed flutter. He reached up his hand, and she gently took the animal and disappeared into the foliage.
    From above came a few rustling noises, then the angry screech of what had to be an adult owl and a yelp. Fearing Miss Black would fall, he stepped forward to catch her, but at that same moment she jumped neatly down, so that she landed right in front of him.
    He grabbed her arms, a reflex to steady her. She didn’t need his help, but their eyes locked, and for a moment he read vulnerability there before it was replaced with the hard glint of independence. She smelled like sunshine and crushed leaves, and he felt the slim softness of her arms and his body’s yearning to hug her close.
    She stepped away from him. It had all happened in the space of a few moments.
    But as he watched her brush some leaves from her skirts with her head down, that vulnerability he’d glimpsed tugged at him. Who was this woman? Where had she come from? She was clearly educated and intelligent, and though she was too forthright and she dressed terribly, she was not rough, merely unusual.
    That life-on-the-edge-of-propriety quality he’d observed in her the night before had suggested that she’d known some hardship or that she had some burden she might trade for money. And yet today, in the company of his ward, she looked at ease, even if her eyes seemed to be hiding something.
    Had a good night’s sleep and a good breakfast solved her troubles? He was certain not. Something about her niggled him, but only trouble would come of interesting himself in her and whatever her story might be. He must leave her to her own obviously capable, if unorthodox, devices.
    He cleared his throat meaningfully. She looked up briskly, as though little of note had occurred. “I didn’t think the parent was in the nest,” she said. “Though I might have paid more attention had I not been distracted.”
    There was a husky note mingled with the hint of irritation in her voice, and it satisfied a part of him he shouldn’t be listening to, even as he was pierced by the thought that Ginger would have liked Anna